How the County Is Responding to the Trauma Factor

Posted By
Megan Burks
On
April 8, 2014 @ 1:10 pm
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Achievement Gap,City Heights,Education,Gang Culture,Health Care,News,San Diego County Government |
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San Diego County Health and Human Services[1] Director Nick Macchione sent a letter[2] to his department last week detailing a sweep of training and programmatic tweaks to get his entire staff, and the services they offer, trauma-informed.

[3]Put simply, he wants the people who provide food stamp, unemployment, mental health, Medi-Cal and disability help in the region to be better prepared to work with people experiencing trauma.

The California Department of Public Health[5] released its first comprehensive study of childhood trauma Friday. It found 61 percent of California adults have experienced some level of childhood trauma that makes them significantly more likely to engage in risky behaviors or have costly health problems. Experiences as extreme as physical abuse or as common as having divorced parents can be factors, according to the study.

The state interviewed 9,500 adults and found, compared with those who did not experience trauma as children, those who had repeated traumatic experiences were:

San Diego Unified is now urging teachers and other school staff to attend voluntary trauma training through the County Office of Education next month. The nonprofit San Diego Youth Services[10] is putting on the sessions. Its director, Steven Jella, said recognizing the effects of trauma can help teachers deal with difficult behavior.

“How does the brain work? How does it react to things that happen to it? And ultimately, how then do you respond to the brain when it’s reacting to things that may or may not be about the things we think it is in the moment,” Jella said.

Don Buchheit, director of student services for the San Diego County Office of Education[11], describes the philosophy – which he said should be applied to learning and behavior issues – this way: “It’s the difference in saying to a student, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and ‘Can you tell me a little bit about what’s happened to you?'”

Buchheit said his office trains up to 600 education professionals throughout the county each year through 12 workshops. Not all are explicitly about trauma, he said, but they all touch on the issue.

“I think people are talking about it more,” Buchheit said. “They’re looking at issues of violence and drop out rates and asking, ‘Why is this happening?’ Mental health seems to be the consistent piece that keeps coming up as the main variable.”

Article printed from
Voice of San Diego:
https://www.voiceofsandiego.org